PREVALENCE OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT BACTERIA IN NILE WATER AND SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS

Abstract

The overuse of antibiotics has contributed to the rapid spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria which led to increasing interest about the potential environmental and public health risks. This study is concerned with evaluating the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) in raw and treated Nile water and sewage. It is obvious that, the drinking water treatment in all drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) was microbiologically effective as the total bacterial community and antibiotics resistant bacteria were completely removed from treated Nile water and tap water samples. Only, in El-Giza DWTP, the bacterial populations reappeared in tap water with low values comparing with raw Nile water. The counts of bacterial population, gentamycin, ciprofloxacin, doxycycline and amoxicillin resistant bacteria in tap water represented 0.0008, 0.72, 1.02, 90.9 and 0.6% of the counts in raw Nile water, respectively. Also, it was observed that, the counts of total bacteria, gentamycin, ciprofloxacin, doxycycline and amoxicillin resistant bacteria decreased in treated sewage at a reduction percentage of 54.5, 76.9, 73.3, 84.0 and 77.3%, respectively. Additionally, the counts of total coliforms, doxycycline and amoxicillin resistant bacteria decreased at a reduction ration of 99.7, 98.1and 95.7%, respectively in treated sewage. Most bacterial isolates from raw Nile water and sewage were multi antibiotic resistant Gram-negative short rods.